


Shelter

by DreamsOfSleep



Series: Shelter [1]
Category: New Girl
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Father Figures, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 11:39:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8142394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsOfSleep/pseuds/DreamsOfSleep
Summary: Jess takes in a student escaping from an abusive home.





	1. New Student

**Author's Note:**

  * For [schuylergirls](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=schuylergirls).



> This was a Tumblr fic request from @schuylergirls for a NG/Matilda scenario where Jess has a Miss Honey relationship with one of her students. AU taking place shortly after Jess moves into the loft and before she is fully familiar with the guys. Diverges from canon in that Jess teaches kindergarten and Winston has Furguson but isn’t a cop. 
> 
> I couldn’t really get a Jess-only fic to work so this turned into a fic focusing on how the guys in the loft would be as dads, but I hope you and your sister still enjoy it! I think I’m better at writing dads than moms for some reason so I was really struggling to write “maternal instinct Jess,” but maybe someone else wants to take a crack at this prompt? You’re freely welcome to (fair play since the original idea wasn’t mine).

Jess remembers the first time she met Ava.

She had been a late transfer into her kindergarten class. She stood outside the door of Jess’s classroom on that first day holding the hand of the hall monitor, her small, pale hand disappearing into the hall monitor’s large, dark one. 

She was small for her age. Her skin was pale, ghostly, like she never saw the sun. She wore a threadbare cotton dress, which was much too thin for the weather, and a pair of tattered sneakers. She hid behind her long matted brown hair, looking down at her feet. 

Jess kneeled down so she was at eye level with Ava.

“I’m Miss Day. What’s your name?”

“Ava,” she mumbled. She was soft-spoken so you had to lean in to hear her. 

“Well, Ava, it’s lovely to meet you. Let’s find you a desk,” Jess said taking Ava’s hand from the hall monitor. “You can pick any one you want.” Jess didn’t believe in assigned seats. She thought it was better for the children to choose their seats themselves. They were only in kindergarten after all. There would be enough time for all that rigor and structure later in life.

Ava chose a desk close to the door, sitting down gingerly. Her feet moved nervously under the desk like she was ready to bolt at a moment’s notice but she stayed in her seat, hands neatly clasped, while the other children bustled around her greeting their friends and getting ready for the day.

\---

Jess liked to have the students complete the district-mandated math warmup exercises first thing in the morning to get it out of the way while she took attendance. The students were only in kindergarten but no classroom was free from the tyranny of standardized testing. 

Jess looked up from her desk and the other students were hard at work on the worksheets, familiar with the morning routine. Ava however was sitting looking forlornly down at her paper. Jess got up and went over to her. Sometimes it was tough for students to adjust to a new classroom.

“Do you need some help, Ava?”

“I don’t have a pencil,” she said timidly. She was shaking like a leaf. “I’m sorry,” she whispered automatically. That seemed to be something she said a lot.

Jess noticed that Ava hadn’t brought anything with her. No jacket, no backpack, no pencil case. Sometimes the parents forgot that even kindergarteners need school supplies.

“It’s alright, Ava. You can have one of mine. Just ask if you need something, okay, sweetie?”

Ava accepted the pencil gratefully. “Thank you, Miss Day,” she whispered. 

\---

Jess prided herself on getting to know all her students well, learning all their little quirks. She loved teaching kindergarten because it was such a great time to see kids grow into their personalities. Teachers spent the most time with kids growing up, sadly more than most of their parents, so they saw a lot of things in these kids that other adults in their lives missed.

At the same time she was teaching her students, they were teaching her too. Jess got to learn all about Ava in those first few weeks they were together. 

\---

She was exceedingly polite, but always looked down at her feet and rarely made direct eye contact with anyone she spoke to. It was different from shy, Jess knew shy, knew about the type of kids that always took a while to warm up. Ava wasn’t shy, she was frightened, fearful in a real way, anxious and tightly wound, curling into herself. Her automatic response to everything was an apology, even if there wasn’t anything to apologize for, like she was trying to head off some real or perceived anger coming her way. 

\---

Ava loved reading. She especially loved stories about knights rescuing princesses. She would marvel at all the books in the classroom library, holding them like precious things and carefully turning the pages. 

“You can take some home with you if you want to, Ava,” Jess said.

“Oh no, Miss Day,” Ava said. “My daddy wouldn’t like that.” 

Her father didn’t seem to like a lot of things. It was an explanation Jess heard often from Ava, a catchall reason for all the things she wasn’t allowed to do. 

\---

Jess noticed that Ava frequently went without lunch. She would just sit at the lunch tables and read while the other kids ate their lunches.

“Where’s your lunch, sweetie?” 

“My daddy just forgot again…he forgets a lot,” Ava offered up.

Jess started bringing an extra lunch from home to share with her. No students went hungry in her classroom.

She also started noticing that Ava only had a wardrobe of three threadbare dresses, which she wore in rotation every week. 

Something felt off about it, but Jess knew some parents were just embarrassed that they couldn’t make ends meet and some kids just ended up going without. It was an unfortunate reality for many students that people didn't like to think about but Jess saw far too often.

\---

Ava didn’t run around on the playground during recess like the other kids. She sat prim and proper at the picnic tables and watched the other children play. It looked like she really wanted to join them, but she told Jess her daddy didn’t like her getting dirt all over herself. It made him mad. So she just watched the other kids play longingly until it was time to go back inside again. Jess started creating indoor scavenger hunts during recess so Ava wouldn’t have to feel left out. 

\---

All of Ava’s movements were careful, deliberate. Even when all the other kids were being enthusiastically messy during fingerpainting, Ava was painstakingly careful not to make a mess. But one day, one of the other kids surprised her by coming up beside her to borrow a color when she wasn’t expecting it and she knocked over the paints, spilling them over the floor. She was terrified, trying to clean it up on her own, apologizing over and over again on the verge of tears, inconsolable even though it had just been an accident. They were washable paints and Jess showed her how easy they were to clean up and how they wouldn’t stain at all but Ava never did fingerpainting again after that. 

Instead, while the other kids were painting, she would sit at her desk and draw pictures in crayon and color pencil. She drew pictures of happy families with mommies and daddies and kids playing in front of cozy houses on sunny days. 

“Your family?” Jess inquired, admiring her pictures.

“No, Miss Day, I don’t have a mommy. I just have a daddy,” Ava replied. 

Sometimes she drew angry pictures with big, hulking monsters and small figures cowering in dark corners. She didn’t like to talk about those. “This is what daddy looks like when he gets mad,” she said once. She didn’t elaborate. 

\---

One day, Ava came to school with bruises all along her upper arms like someone had grabbed her too tightly. Ava tried to hide them by crossing her arms and pulling down the short sleeves of her dress.

“What happened, sweetie?” Jess asked her gently. 

"I fell down when I was playing," Ava replied flatly. A rehearsed response that sounded like something she had said often before.

"I made daddy mad," Ava muttered under her breath before catching herself. A flicker of fear crossed over Ava’s face. “Please don’t tell daddy I told. I wasn’t supposed to tell. He didn't mean to; I was being bad. I don’t want him to get in trouble,” she whispered.

Jess felt sick. Someone was hurting one of her little sparrows. She didn’t want to jump to conclusions but she sat down and wrote out all the worrying signs she had noticed about Ava. She knew the step she had to take, but she knew once she made that call, there was no going back. 

Parent-teacher conferences were just next week. She wanted to meet Ava’s father face to face first before drawing any conclusions. 


	2. The Monsters That Walk Among Us

Jess sat across her desk from Ava’s father, Kevin. 

He came in a suit and was slickly charming, but it seemed like a mask. Sometimes the mask would fall and she could see the undercurrent of anger running through him then. Not Nick-angry, someone who was prickly with a gooey center, but someone who was _violent, dangerous, seething with rage._ Jess would blink and it would be gone again, hidden within him under the veneer of charm. Sometimes you met someone and they just felt bad. It wasn't something you could put your finger on exactly and that was the unnerving aspect, it made you doubt yourself, think it was all in your head, but then something would surface when you were talking to that person and you just knew your gut feelings were true. She felt a shiver of fear go down her spine, but she calmed herself, didn’t let him see how much he rattled her. She remained prim and professional, cordial even.

She talked about Ava’s classwork, her love for reading, the nascent curiosity she saw in Ava for math and science, the creative potential she saw in her for art and literature. Her father seemed bored through most of it, but pasted on a smile at regular intervals to make it seem as if he was interested like how he imagined a normal, loving father would behave.

He looked at the pictures Ava drew. His eyes flickered briefly when he saw the angry ones. “Some imagination this kid has,” he commented dryly.

She mentioned Ava’s bruises and without missing a beat he said, “Oh, you know kids. Always playing too rough. Clumsy.”

She discussed Ava's shyness, her hesitation to participate in class or make friends or even talk to anyone, children or grownups alike. "Shy, like her mother was," her father shrugged. "She'll grow out of it."

“I'm sorry to hear about your late wife. I know it must be difficult for you as a single father raising a daughter,” Jess said carefully. He seemed to use that as an excuse to pat himself on the back.

“It’s a real shame her mother isn’t alive anymore,” he drawled. “Not a lot of guys would have stuck around after that. Guess Ava and I are stuck together now though, huh?”

Jess felt a shudder run through her body at the emotionless way this man talked about his dead wife, about his daughter. She cut the meeting short.

“That’s all I have to discuss with you today, Mr. St. James. Did you have any questions about Ava?”

“I think you covered it all, Miss Day.”

They shook hands and Jess had to resist the urge to pull her hand back and wipe it on her dress afterwards, feeling like she had just touched the presence of evil.

She reminds herself that there is good in everyone, but she thinks all the good that was ever in this man got concentrated into Ava. She went home and made the call.

\---

Child protective services arrived to the St. James residence in the night. Mr. St. James wouldn’t let them inside so they had to call the police and obtain a warrant. Inside, they found Ava in a small, windowless closet with a locked padlock on the door. She was sleeping on the cold, hard floor with no mattress covered only by a thin, soiled blanket. There was barely enough room for her to stand inside. She had to sleep curled up into a tiny ball so she could lie down. It was filthy inside. Some moldy food remained in the corner of the closet bearing the bitemarks of rats. Cockroaches skittered around when the closet door was opened, running from the light spilling in through the open door. The police wrote out a report to file criminal charges against Mr. St. James.

Ava slowly awakened from all the commotion outside her small closet room. She rubbed her eyes sleepily, squinting into the sudden brightness of flashlights illuminating the dark room. She hugged the blanket around herself and stared at all the strange adults milling around outside the open doorway with wide, frightened eyes. 

“Where’s my daddy?” she whispered fearfully. “Only my daddy is allowed to open the door. He’s going to be mad.”

“Come on out, sweetheart,” the police officer said in a warm, soothing voice. “You don't have to be afraid of him anymore. We’re going to take you somewhere safe.” 


	3. New Roommate

So the police came and took Ava away from that terrible life she had to live in silence. Jess breathed out a sigh of relief. For weeks afterwards, she provided evidence against Ava’s father and filled out the copious amounts of paperwork. She cried over the crime scene photos of the dark, filthy room Ava had to live in. _Her poor, little sparrow trapped in that small, windowless room._

She found out that Ava’s father was Ava’s only surviving relative. Any other next of kin could not be located. They were going to put Ava in a foster home far away. Jess read all the horror stories of abuse that went on in those foster homes. It haunted her dreams. She was the one that called Child Protective Services. She had promised herself that no more harm would come to Ava. She couldn’t just let Ava go from bad to worse, get bounced around all those foster homes, abandoned and forgotten. She had to make sure Ava got a real family, a forever family. Ava was hers now. Her responsibility. 

She convinced the Court to let Ava stay with her until they could find a good family to adopt her. The Court was easy to convince, now she just had to convince the guys.

\---

“No, Jess. None of your strays,” Schmidt said firmly. “We have four people living in the loft already. Plus, Winston’s cat. It’s tight enough as it is.”

“Not stray _s_ , Schmidt. One. One little girl. I can’t let her go to foster care. I just can’t. It’s just temporary until they find a good family to adopt her.”

“You don’t even know how long that will take, Jess. I’m with Schmidt,” Nick said.

She turned to Winston. “You owe me, Winston. I voted yes so you could keep Furguson when both of them said no.”

Winston hugged Furguson protectively against himself like Nick and Schmidt would try and take Furguson away from him. Nick and Schmidt were his friends first, but Jess _did_ vote yes so he could keep Furguson and Winnie the Bish is nothing if not fair. “I vote yes. I think having a kid around the loft would be fun.” He likes kids so he doesn’t think it will be that bad. It’ll probably be like when he babysits for Alvin.

Jess breathes out. _One down, one more to go. Who’s easier to break, Nick or Schmidt?_ She looks between the two them as they both try to give her poker faces. She thinks Nick. For some reason, she always got the feeling that he was a big softie under his grumpy exterior.

“Please, Nick? She doesn’t have anybody else. The only person she had in the entire world was her father. He was supposed to protect her and he hurt her.”

Something changes in Nick’s face when she mentions Ava’s father. “Okay,” he says quietly.

She didn’t expect Nick to cave that easily, but she’ll take it. She turns to Schmidt. “Three against one, Schmidt.”

Schmidt sighs unhappily but he bends to the loft vote. Winston and Nick both caved so he has to cave too.

“You win, Jess. Guess we’re getting a new roommate.”

“I promise you guys won’t even know she’s here.”


	4. Sugar & Spice and Everything Nice

Jess went to pick Ava up from the social worker’s office. She paused outside the office door and looked at Ava through the glass window. The large chair she was sitting in swallowed up her small form. She was wearing a mismatching long-sleeved shirt and sweatpants that were much too big on her. She pulled at the over-long sleeves of her shirt nervously and looked down at her feet, tiny and lost. She turned towards the sound of the office door opening. When Ava sees Jess, she clambers down from her chair and runs over to her. Jess kneels down to catch her in her arms.

“They took my daddy, Miss Day,” Ava whispered tearfully into Jess’s hair. “They were going to take me away too.”

Jess cupped Ava’s precious face in her hands. “Oh, no, honey, you’re going to come live with me for a while. I won’t let them take you away.”

Ava let Jess take her by the hand and lead her outside to Jess’s car to make the journey home.

\---

On the drive home, Jess described where Ava would be living in the foreseeable future. 

“You’re going to come live with me in my apartment. I live with three roommates: Winston, Schmidt, and Nick. Plus, a cat named Furguson. It’s a bit tight, but it’s cozy. You’ll have your own bed in my room. I already cleared out some space for you to put all of your things. And if you ever need anything, you just have to ask. You never have to be afraid to ask me anything, Ava.”

\---

Ava held Jess’s hand the entire time from when she first entered the car until they reached the front door of the loft. When Jess opened the apartment door, Ava found three curious strangers looking out at her from the couch. They were all men so they reminded her of her dad and she took a step back to hide behind Jess, still holding tightly to Jess’s hand.

“It’s okay, Ava. They’re nice,” Jess bent down to whisper to her. “You don’t have to talk to them if you don’t want to right now, honey. Let’s just get you to your new room.”

Jess walked Ava briskly past her roommates to the safety of her room.

\---

Jess wasn’t going to force Ava to meet her roommates until she was ready so for the first few weeks they lived in their own private world in Jess’s room. 

Jess introduced Ava to Cece first. Ava never knew her mother so Jess wanted Ava to have a lot of strong, positive female role models in her life. Ava still didn’t have many clothes to wear, just a few mismatching outfits from social services, so they had fun taking Ava out to get her an entirely new wardrobe. They bought her new dresses and pretty blouses and colorful skirts as well as warm sweaters and crisp jackets and real cotton pajamas with cartoon animals. Ava loved it all. She couldn’t believe all these things were really hers. She especially loved the new pair of sneakers Jess bought for her, dark blue with white trim and red neon lights in the heels that would light up whenever she would walk so she would never have to be alone in the dark again.

\---

Jess and Cece threw Ava a slumber party. Jess carefully washed Ava's hair with fancy shampoo and Cece helped work out all the knots and snarls so that her hair was clean and soft and smelled like lavender. They wore fluffy bathrobes and painted strange and wonderful designs on each other's nails. They braided each other’s hair and made friendship bracelets and dreamcatchers from Jess’s art supplies. They created make-believe kingdoms where there were no scary monsters only nice ones that went exploring in distant lands to attend tea parties thrown by the Teddy Bear King and all his loyal stuffed animal subjects. They played dressup and pretended they were princesses like in all those fairytales Ava loved so much, only they didn’t need princes or knights in shining armor to save them because all the princesses could rescue themselves.

Cece and Jess lay down on their stomachs on the bedroom floor next to Ava and helped her draw happy pictures to decorate the walls of Jess’s bedroom so it would feel like Ava's bedroom too. Jess thought about all the new memories she could help Ava create, happy memories to replace all those sad memories that lived inside her.

Doing these things might seem trivial and meaningless to most people but Jess knew it meant the world to little girls who never got to experience them. Jess wanted Ava to know what it was like to just be a little girl and have silly fun, to not have to hold the weight of the world on her tiny shoulders. 

\---

The first few weeks, Jess noticed that Ava was afraid to ask for food so they cleared out a shelf together in the kitchen and decorated it just for her. They labeled it “Ava’s shelf.” Any food on that shelf was Ava’s and she could always go up and take anything from that shelf without having to ask.

On the weekends, they stood side by side at the dining room table and made cookies and cupcakes and pastries together. Ava was Jess’s little helper and Jess showed Ava all of the recipes her mother and her grandmother taught her when she was a little girl. She thought about all those years Ava had to live starved of food and starved of love and vowed that Ava would never have to experience either of those things in her life ever again. Jess would fill Ava's life with joy and love and laughter. She would make sure Ava's life was filled with enough happiness to overshadow all the darkness she had to live in before.

\---

They developed their own little routine.

Jess would wake Ava with a gentle shake of the shoulder in the morning. She would stick her head outside the bedroom door and make sure none of her roommates were around so Ava could make it into the bathroom safely. They would brush their teeth next to each other standing at the double sinks. Afterwards, Jess would hum as she brushed Ava’s hair nice and neat. She would find creative ways to braid Ava’s hair or use a pretty hair clip or a colorful ribbon just to see Ava smile her shy, happy smile. They would help each other pick out their outfits for the day and have breakfast together at the dining room table. Jess would make sure Ava had a jacket in case it got cold and packed her a healthy lunch. She would always put a surprise in Ava's lunch for her to discover, a silly note or a folded paper crane or one of the sweet pastries they made together, because she wanted Ava to live in a world where there was always something good hidden just around the corner. She would help Ava put on her backpack and they would go down to Jess’s car to go to school, hand in hand.

Jess loved sharing these quiet moments in the morning with Ava. Jess thinks it's not the big moments of love most people really need but these tiny acts of affection. She would make sure Ava's life was filled with these moments so that Ava would know there would always be someone there for her and that she was loved. 

When they got home from school, Jess would go into the apartment to check where all her roommates were so they wouldn’t surprise Ava. If no one was home, she would make Ava an after-school snack and help her do her homework at the dining room table. Otherwise, they would spend time together in the safety of Jess's bedroom. Ava would help her cook dinner for just the two of them and they would either play board games or snuggle in bed to read stories together. She would help Ava shower and get dressed in her pajamas before tucking her in to go to sleep in her rollaway bed in the corner of the room. She would sing Ava a lullaby until she drifted off to sleep.

Sometimes, Ava would get scared in the middle of the night and crawl in next to Jess in her big bed. Jess would hold Ava’s tiny, shaking form against herself and whisper sweet things to her to vanquish all the monsters in Ava's head until she drifted back to sleep in the safety of Jess's embrace.

\---

Jess always wanted to be a mother. She thought she would be married by now and have a family of her own. Spencer had cheated on her so the “husband” part of the equation hadn’t worked out and she had buried the desire deep within herself. But living with Ava stirred that longing in her again. It felt like she was living in an alternate reality where she had had a daughter. It didn’t even matter that she didn’t have a significant other, a boyfriend or husband to come home to, it was enough for her to have the love of this precious little girl.

She loved the time she and Ava had been spending together, but she also knew she was being selfish. She didn’t want to keep Ava all to herself. She wanted Ava to explore the world, to learn that people were naturally good and not twisted and evil and bad inside. People thought Jess was naïve for believing in a world where people were naturally good. She wasn’t dumb or being willfully ignorant, Jess knew there were bad things in the world, but because it was bad, she knew it was even more important for her to choose to believe in the good. She didn’t want Ava to be afraid of anyone, to hide away in her room forever. To enable Ava’s impulse to hide herself away would be like Ava had never left that closet. She would be trapped reliving the fear of her own mind over and over again, letting everything that her father had done to her overshadow and control her whole life. 

Jess wanted to introduce Ava to the men in her life: her roommates. She wouldn’t push her, but she would do it gradually. She wanted Ava to have positive male role models, just like she had positive female role models in her life. 

\--

Ava had fallen asleep during Jess’s bedtime story. Jess tucked the covers more snugly around her. She stroked Ava’s hair and hummed a lullaby to her. She wished away the scars her father had left on her, wished for her to grow up strong and happy with an unstoppable heart that could give love out to the world in a way her father couldn’t, to take love in in a way her father took from her.


	5. Winston

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AKA Mr. Cat Fancy and the Amazing Furguson

Jess was planning to introduce Ava to her roommates one by one to avoid overwhelming her. Jess could tell that her roommates were just as nervous about meeting Ava as Ava was about meeting them. They were all guys in their 30s so not exactly “kid-friendly,” or not overtly anyway. Currently, they thought of Ava as a nuisance, an unnecessary inconvenience in their lives that was sprung upon them by their annoying but well-intentioned girl roommate, something infringing on their ability to do their single guy things like getting shitfaced on a Friday night or bringing home randoms to hook up with. Her roommates seemed like good guys, but guys that were still stuck in perpetual adolescence even as they were well into adulthood. Ava was a concrete reminder of the responsibility awaiting them on the horizon, of getting married and becoming dads with kids of their own, of having to be responsible for someone other than themselves, of holding someone else's lives in their hands and having to risk screwing them up. She wasn’t asking them for all of that, but she was asking them to grow just a little to fit this precious little girl into their lives. Jess wanted to plan a perfect day for each of them so they would fall in love with Ava just like she had. 

Her roommates could be tough nuts to crack. She had only been living in the loft a few months so she didn’t know them that well yet, but everyone had an “in,” the one thing that would endear you to them forever. She just had to find it.

\---

One day, Principal Foster got the bright idea of holding faculty trust exercises for two weeks after school. Jess believed this was the influence of that new vice principal Genevieve who transferred in from that fancy Montessori school, Banyon Canyon. Genevieve complained that their school wasn’t “progressive” enough and the faculty were “disconnected” from one another and needed to get in touch with their inner teachers again. Principal Foster thought that was an excellent idea and enthusiastically went along with all of Genevieve's suggestions. He was always looking for excuses to get the faculty together. He was oblivious to the fact that the other teachers were much less enthused to be dragged into yet another one of his failed educational endeavors. The events and meetings he would hold usually just devolved into all the teachers drinking tequila and singing bad karaoke in the teachers’ lounge. Jess tried to talk to him about getting out of it just this one time, but he got that hurt look on his face just like whenever someone would tell him they already heard his story about his trip to Peru to live among the natives and he didn’t need to tell it again, so she couldn’t say no. These after-school meetings could drag on for hours, depending on how chatty Principal Foster felt on a particular day and how keen he was to tell weird, meandering stories about his life to the faculty, so Jess didn’t want Ava to get stuck waiting in her classroom all alone for hours. Cece was working so her only option was to get one of her roommates to watch Ava.

Jess was nervous because she wasn’t nearly done brainstorming the “perfect day” for each roommate to meet Ava. Winston seemed the least intimidating option to ask for help. Plus, he was on an adjusted sleep schedule so she knew he would be home at that time and didn’t have to feel too guilty about imposing on his life. She hoped Winston would say yes.

\---

“It’s fine, Jess. I can do it,” Winston said. “Do you need me to do anything for her?”

She thanked him profusely and made a mental note to make him that coconut cream pie he said he liked so much. “You’re the best, Winston! I owe you one. You don’t have to do anything. She’ll probably just stay in my room the whole time. I just need someone to be here, just in case.”

Jess went back into her room to say goodbye to Ava. “I have to go back to school, sweetie, but Winston will be right outside. Just ask him for help if you need anything.” 

Jess knelt down to give Ava a big hug. This would be their first major time being separated since Ava had come to live with her in the loft. Jess felt pangs of guilt and sadness for leaving Ava behind like she was abandoning her, but Jess knew this had to happen eventually. 

“I promise that I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said tearfully. She had to force herself to let go of Ava and leave the loft. 

\---

Furguson knew something had changed in the loft a few months ago. That's when that new, interesting smell started coming out of Jess’s room and she started keeping her bedroom door closed all the time. She never used to keep it closed. Furguson liked to go into Jess’s room a lot because she had the holy grail of yarn in there. She would get mad sometimes when she found him all tangled up in her good yarn, but she never stayed mad for long. He would climb into her lap for pets and everything would be forgiven. Her room also had the big windows so he could curl up and take a catnap in the last good morning sunbeam. She also had baskets of warm laundry to curl up in on Sundays. Before the new smell came, Jess used to give him those special fish treats Winston bought for him if he went into her room and was looking especially cute that day. But now Jess was always distracted or preoccupied behind her closed bedroom door so Furguson couldn’t sneak in there to convince her that his cuteness needed to be rewarded.

Furguson liked Jess a lot. Winston would always be his favorite person because Winston rescued him from Outside, but Jess was always nice to him unlike those other two humans who lived here who only seemed to tolerate him. 

Schmidt seemed annoyed at him all the time. He would walk around using a lint roller on all his clothes while giving him the stinkeye and sighing dramatically. Furguson liked Schmidt’s room because he always had a lot of boxes for him to sit in from all of the packages he ordered, but Schmidt would spray him with water whenever he would find him in them and Furguson didn't like that. It reminded him of getting wet in the rain when he lived Outside. He would hiss at Schmidt and Schmidt would yell at him and then Winston would yell at Schmidt. Then it was Furguson's job to do something cute so Winston would be happy again and he would make up with Schmidt. Schmidt would also spray him with water if he crawled on the kitchen counter to investigate what Schmidt was cooking. "Curiosity killed the cat, Furguson," Schmidt would say to him warningly while he licked the moisture from his fur and he and Schmidt stared each other down. The only time Schmidt seemed to like him was when he had leftover sushi and would feed him sashimi on chopsticks. Then Schmidt would giggle like a little kid and say, “Look, Winston, he thinks he’s people!” Humans were weird but Furguson would never turn down free food so he thought it was a fair deal. Schmidt wasn't a cat person, but Furguson wanted to get along with him anyway because it made Winston upset when they didn't. Furguson thought he could win Schmidt over eventually by wearing him down with his cuteness. 

Furguson could tell that Nick was an animal person, but he pretended he wasn't, like how Nick pretends he doesn’t like anything. Nick’s room had a lot of interesting nooks and crannies to explore, but it made his fur all gross whenever he walked across the piles on the floor and he had to spend forever cleaning himself afterwards. The challenge was to jump around through all of the clean areas so he didn't get his fur all gross and make it to the bed to survey the kingdom of Nick’s room for any treasures, like glasses of Nick's floor milk. Nick got really mad at him when he caught him drinking from his glass of floor milk that one time, but Furguson thinks Nick's glasses of floor milk are still fair game to drink from when Nick isn't looking. Furguson thinks Nick is only pretending to be annoyed at him most of the time because Nick seemed genuinely upset when he accidentally smushed him lying down on his bed to go to sleep that one time he came home late at night from working at the bar. Nick bought him salmon for a whole week in apology so Furguson forgave him. Furguson thinks Nick likes Winston a lot so Furguson is cool with Nick too, even if he still thinks Nick’s rules about floor milk are weird.

\---

Furguson saw Jess leave but that new, interesting smell remained. Usually the smell would go with Jess. He sniffed at Jess’s door, curious. He stuck his paw under the door to play with the springy doorstop. Jess used to open the door when he did that. The door opened a crack and a new, pint-size human peeked back out at him. _Mrow?_ he inquired, his tail curling into a question mark. They consider each other.

Ava lights up. “Hi, kitty,” she whispers. She wants to pet him, but she is a bit afraid to touch him, afraid of getting in trouble. Jess didn’t say she could. Her dad used to get mad if she did things he didn’t say she could do first.

“You can pet him if you want to,” Winston said to her from the couch. “He’s a friendly cat. He likes everyone.”

Jess said Winston was nice so Ava thinks that means she’s allowed to. Ava reaches out a trembling hand and carefully strokes Furguson’s fur. She’s delighted when Furguson purrs, arching into her hand. He turns onto his back for belly scratches. 

“You want to help me feed him, Ava?” Winston asks.

She gives a small, shy nod in return.

\---

Winston opens up a can of wet food and shows her how much dry food to scoop out. She does it carefully, small and serious, making sure there is exactly the right amount. Winston is trusting her to do this so it’s a big responsibility.

They watch Furguson eat together. He only eats half of it. Winston says Furguson likes to save the other half for a midnight snack later. Winston takes out all of Furguson’s toys and shows Ava how Furguson likes to chase his favorite mouse toy.

Furguson hops up on the couch to sit in Nick's couch hole. Ava thinks she should go back into Jess’s room. She’s probably bothering Winston like how she bothered her dad by being around all the time so he had to put her in the small room, but Winston convinces her to stay and watch Disney movies with him and Furguson. She sits next to Furguson on the couch and pets him as they watch princess movies together. She’s fascinated by them. She whispers to Winston that she’s never seen them before. 

“Never?” Winston says in surprise. Then he looks sad.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, looking down at her feet. She seemed to make a lot of people sad or mad by being around. 

“You don't have anything to be sorry for, Ava,” he says to her gently. He feels the familiar pull at his heartstrings like the first time he saw Furguson half mangled from being run over by a car on the side of the road, that impulse to care for a living thing that is hurt and broken. He wants to give this sad little girl a hug to comfort her, but she has tucked her body into a tiny ball on the far side of the couch next to Furguson, shrinking into herself, and he doesn't want to frighten her more. So instead he pastes on a smile and asks her, “You want some popcorn?”

\---

When Jess comes home, she finds Ava fast asleep on the couch curled up with a purring Furguson. Their heads peek out from the throw that Winston has placed over the two of them. She closes the front door quietly. 

“How did it go?” she whispers to Winston in the kitchen. She awaits his response with trepidation.

“She’s a great kid, Jess,” Winston says. “We had a lot of fun.”

Jess gives Winston a big hug. “Thanks again for doing this, Winston.”

“It wasn’t any trouble at all, Jess.”

They look back over to Ava and Furguson curled up against each other on the couch. “She and Furguson are best buddies now.”

Jess goes back to the couch to gently shake Ava awake. Ava rubs sleep from her eyes and reaches out to hug Jess. Furguson climbs out from between them so he doesn't get smushed.

“Did you have a good time with Winston?” Jess asked.

Ava nods sleepily. “He’s nice,” she whispered.

Jess smiles and picks Ava up to carry her to bed.

\---

Now every day after school, Jess drops Ava off at home to hang out with Winston.

They watch cartoons together. Sometimes they mute the volume and Winston makes up absurd dialogue for all the characters to make Ava laugh.

Ava helps Winston with jigsaw puzzles. He’s terrible at them but he really enjoys them. For the first time Winston finally finishes a jigsaw puzzle and it looks just like the box. He takes a picture to show Schmidt that he is a puzzle master now so there!

One day, Jess comes home to an obstacle course set up in the living room. “Winston…?” Jess calls out and he sticks his head up from behind the couch.

“Watch where you step, Jess. Furguson is in training for the Cat Olympics.”

Ava shows Jess how she leads Furguson through the obstacle course using his favorite cat toy.

They look like they are having such a fun time that Jess lets Ava and Winston play for a few more hours in the living room with Furguson while she finishes grading some papers in her room. It gets really late. Ava has school tomorrow and Winston has to go to work so Jess eventually has to pull Ava away to get her ready for bed. 

“Aww…” Winston says in disappointment. “We have to do this again tomorrow so Furguson can get the gold medal, right, Ava?” Ava gives him a tiny nod and her shy, happy smile. Winston holds Furguson’s paw and waves goodbye to Ava as Jess leads her away to their room.

 _One down, two to go,_ Jess thinks, smiling to herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I just anthropomorphize Furguson? Yes, yes, I did. :)


	6. Schmidt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AKA How Schmidt's Heart Grew Three Sizes

Schmidt and Nick have been noticeably absent from the loft since Ava arrived. Jess thinks they have been hiding from her, avoiding getting roped into one of her schemes to get them to fall in love with Ava. 

Cece is able to convince Schmidt to try and get to know Ava in exchange for a date. Jess thinks Schmidt must really like Cece because he goes along with it and actually tries to make the effort. He tags along with her and Ava when they go to the park, even though he has a long-suffering look on his face the entire time. 

\---

“Ugh, outdoors,” Schmidt mutters in disgust to himself while sitting on the park bench next to Jess. They are watching Ava play on the jungle gym. Or Jess is watching Ava. Schmidt is giving the stinkeye to any kids that he thinks come too close to where they are sitting. He looks especially perturbed by the sticky kid licking an ice cream cone with rocky road all over his face sitting on the adjacent bench. He keeps taking out his hand sanitizer and rubbing it all over his hands. 

Jess fleetingly wonders how Schmidt and Nick became best friends. Nick is one of the messiest guys she’s ever known. They snipe at each other a lot but she can tell there is a strong, underlying affection there. Schmidt just accepts Nick as he is for the most part and loves him unconditionally. Schmidt fusses over Nick and tries to take care of him like they are an old married couple. They both made turtlefaces at her when she joked about it one day though.

_“Ugh, I could do much better than *Nick*,” Schmidt said. “No offense,” he says to Nick._

_Nick rolls his eyes at him. “Who else would put up with you, ya drama queen?...How do you know *I* couldn’t do better?”_

_“Yes, someone is just dying to take out Hoodie McGee over here. Nick, I love you, man, but…” Schmidt does a vague gesture that is meant to encompass all of Nick’s Nick-ness. “Come on. You’re like a Ford Pinto with rusted-out panels and I’m a Ferrari.”_

_Wordlessly, Nick holds out the douchebag jar to him._

_“Yeah, alright…” Schmidt relents. He puts in five dollars._

Maybe opposites attract. Even though Schmidt can be a douchebag sometimes, Jess thinks there is a good guy buried underneath all his bravado, a real person covered up by his alpha male persona. Sometimes the mask slips and she can see it inside of him, a good guy who loves things fiercely, who holds on to things like Nick and doesn’t let them go.

\---

A group of kids run past their bench. “ _Youths_ ,” Schmidt mutters under his breath. He visibly shudders. 

“You don’t like kids, Schmidt?”

“Kids are awful, Jess. They’re loud and sticky and messy. Bottomless pits of neediness that’s what they are.”

She snickers. “You just described Nick.”

“Nick is a full-grown adult man, _Jessica,_ ” he says defensively. He thinks about it. “He’s a work in progress,” Schmidt sniffs. 

_Guess Nick gets a pass,_ Jess thinks.

“Ava isn’t like that. You’d like her once you get to know her.”

Kids kind of freak him out. They remind him of a childhood filled with cliques he could never join and mean bullies who would grind his self-esteem under their heels until he was empty and he had to eat and eat and eat to fill himself back up again, filling that ravenous hole in his heart. He was only too glad to put all of that behind him in favor of an adult world where he could navigate the social rules and play them to his advantage. 

“I already went through childhood once, Jess. I have no desire to relive it. I’m here. I’m trying. Tell Cece I tried, okay? You promised.”

“You can do better than this, Schmidt. I know you can think of something that both you and Ava can enjoy together.”

Schmidt grumbles. _No one said the pathway to the Hindu goddess would be easy._

Outwardly, Cece is the ultimate prize for jumping through all of these hoops and doing all of this, spending any time outside in this humidity near all these sticky, germ-infested children, but admittedly, he doesn’t like Jess to be disappointed in him either. _When did that happen?_ He’s not even trying to sleep with her and she’s gotten under his skin. _Great._ Nick was right about living with a woman, how they just worm their way into your life and infect everything with _feelings._ Now he actually does have to come up with some real, sincere thing to do with Ava. _Feelings suck._

===

A few days later, Jess hears a hesitant knocking at her bedroom door and she opens it.

Schmidt is standing there looking nervous and unsure of himself. 

“I don’t know what kids are into nowadays but…I have tickets to the ballet. Do you and Ava want to come with me?”

She smiles at him. _She knew she could believe in him._

“That would be perfect, Schmidt.”

\---

The night of the ballet performance, Schmidt is wound tight. He goes over a million rules for how Ava needs to behave. “Best behavior, Ava,” he warns her.

They are all dressed up and Jess helps Ava put on her white opera gloves. “Lighten up, Schmidt,” she says.

“This is serious, Jess. I don’t want you two embarrassing me.”

Jess rolls her eyes but puts up with it because she can see Schmidt is trying his best to include them in something that is really special to him. She takes Ava’s hand and follows Schmidt out the door to his waiting car.

\---

Schmidt loved the ballet. He had ever since he was a fat kid in Long Island and his mom took him to see “The Nutcracker” at Christmas for the first time when he was five. It was everything he thought he could never hope to be encapsulated on that stage. Strength and agility and athleticism. Mere mortals pushing the abilities of the human body to their fullest extent. He never could really dance, despite his overwhelming enthusiasm for it even after he lost the weight, but he could live vicariously on the stage through all those dancers and everything bad in his life just went away when he imagined himself up there living all those stories through dance.

He usually considered this his “alone time.” He took Nick once but he had fallen asleep before the first act was even over so Schmidt never took him again. Winston went a few times but Schmidt could see he was just trying to be polite since Schmidt invited him and they were trying to get along for Nick’s sake. It pained Schmidt deeply because his friends just didn’t get it. Few people did and they were a dying breed, so he mostly ended up going alone. 

\---

Now he’s sitting here with his annoying girl roommate who he barely knows and the orphan he got roped into sharing his apartment with. He still isn’t thrilled with having to do this, but he tries to look on the bright side: he gets brownie points with Jess for trying with Ava without having to interact in “kid-activities” with her and he gets an excuse to wear his new summer suit and sit in the nice, air-conditioned theater instead of being outside in the gross park reliving _Oliver Twist_ among the common street urchins.

He gets engrossed in the show after a while and forgets about being anxious and annoyed. It’s _Swan Lake_ , a classic and still one of his favorite ballets. Originally a tragic tale of mistaken identity and love lost, some ballet companies have changed the sad ending to a happy one where the lovers reunite and defeat the evil sorcerer. Schmidt isn’t sure how he feels about people just changing the source material but the happy ending is more kid-friendly so it feels like a good thing tonight, even if Schmidt usually roots for the sorcerer because he’s the misunderstood and underappreciated supergenius with the cool superpowers.

Near the end of the 2nd Act, he turns once to look into Jess and Ava’s faces out of habit, gauging the reaction of any new people he brings with him to share in this wondrous experience that few people can appreciate. He is caught by Ava’s expression. She is entranced by the scene before them, captivated by the dancers and the music, her eyes saucer-wide in delight drinking everything in. It melts his heart a little. Her expression encapsulates the way he felt the first time he went to the ballet all those years ago and he knows she’s one of the rare ones, one of the lucky ones who can feel what he feels every time he comes here and loses himself for a few hours in the magic of the stage.

In the 3rd Act when it’s sad and the prince realizes his betrayal, Ava cries her silent tears for his grief. Jess tries to comfort her and mouths apologies to Schmidt but he just shakes his head at her and hands Ava a handkerchief from his suit jacket pocket. It’s only natural to cry when you’re so moved by something so tragically beautiful. 

In the 4th Act when the swans rise up to defeat the evil sorcerer with the power of the prince and princess’s love, Ava cries again but they’re happy tears this time, marveling at the power of all that love out in the world, out in the universe.

\---

After it’s over, Schmidt excuses himself briefly so he can get his program signed by the cast. 

He taps Ava on the shoulder and hands the program to her at the doors of the theater. 

“Oh, thank you,” Ava whispers reverently in her shy way. She traces her fingers over the fancy cursive letters. _The handwritten words of a real princess._ She hugs the program to herself.

Jess is beaming at him and it starts to make him uncomfortable.

He clears his throat. “I just had an extra one. I’ve seen this a million times. Don’t make a big deal about it, Jess.”

“I didn’t say anything, Schmidt,” Jess replies. She tries to keep her face in neutral but fails, her lips curling up at the edges into an irrepressible smile. _She knew he was one of the good ones._

===

Ava slowly makes her way into the lives of her loftmates. Now Ava is comfortable enough to sit at the kitchen table with Schmidt and Winston for breakfast in the mornings before they have to leave for work and she and Ava have to leave for school. Nick is usually MIA in the morning since he sleeps until noon after his night shifts but he’s been surprisingly kind helping her deal with Ava’s nightmares. She isn’t sure how much she can push that relationship yet so she fixes him a plate of breakfast leftovers for lunch and lets him sleep in. 

Ava has been obsessed with everything ballet ever since Schmidt took them to see _Swan Lake._ She draws pictures of all those elegant dancers for days afterwards and makes Schmidt a thank you card that she slips under his bedroom door. Schmidt doesn’t tell anybody but he folds it up and keeps it in his wallet and takes it out to look at sometimes when he’s having a bad day. A lot of his life is about chasing something… _fame, money, women._ He lives for the chase, but sometimes it’s just nice to feel appreciated, to know that someone cares without wanting anything else from you.

\---

On Saturday mornings now, Schmidt and Ava will sit on the couch and watch videos from his collection of ballet performances over breakfast before he leaves for his booty burn workout class.

One night, he catches her dancing by herself in the hallway in her pajamas and bare feet, trying to mimic the movements of all those ballet dancers in the videos she has been watching with him, but she’s shy about it and runs to hide in Jess’s room when she realizes he’s in the hallway with her.

He keeps it to himself for a while because he can feel himself getting sucked in where he told himself he wouldn’t get sucked in, but in the end he has to give in to the sheer adorableness of the idea and he talks to Jess about enrolling her in dance classes. 

At first, Ava goes to ballet classes at the Y but Schmidt has a low opinion of the ballet instructors there so he pulls a few strings and gets her into one of the exclusive dance classes on the other side of the city. And of course if she’s going to go there, she needs to be dressed appropriately so he buys her the best of everything: dance leotards in multiple colors, tights and leg warmers, custom-made ballet shoes, and a fancy monogrammed dance bag to carry everything in so she travels in style.

Schmidt lets Jess think it all still costs as much as classes at the Y because he still isn’t entirely comfortable with the way she looks at him in her Jessica Day way when he does nice things. He gets the feeling she wants to dig into the soft parts of him and unravel his psyche like she tries to do with Nick, but she doesn’t know that he needs his self-constructed confidence to survive, the way Nick needs to deal with the world by angry-fixing the sink or Winston needs to spend two hours combing the knots out of that damn cat's fur every Sunday. Coping strategies that Jess really shouldn’t try to examine too closely, lest she damage the fragile ecosystem of the loft.

But one day he gets careless and Jess finds all the receipts he saved from enrolling Ava in the new dance class and all the fancy ballet stuff he bought for her and nearly has a heart attack. She felt ashamed that maybe she had guilted Schmidt into doing all of that. It was all crazy expensive and she knew sometimes Schmidt covered Nick’s rent when he was short so she didn’t want to be taking his money too. But he waved her off when she tried to talk to him about it and pay him back. He told her it came out of the activity slush fund for the loft, because of course he would have one of those.

\---

The fancy dance class is all the way on the other side of the city so sometimes Jess can’t take Ava there when she gets stuck working late at school but Schmidt makes sure she gets to every single class, even if it means he gets the third degree from his boss Kim and has to make up creative excuses for cutting out early. He just landed red potatoes and the sponge account so he thinks she can’t be too mad, especially because she knows he’s always the first one in the office and usually the last one to leave. She’s just busting his balls the way she always does because she likes to keep him on his toes. And maybe it takes him a little longer to earn that promotion, but for some reason that doesn't bother him as much as he knows it would have in the past. 

\---

On the day of Ava's first big dance recital, Schmidt takes all his good camera equipment with him to film it. He totally doesn’t cry during Ava’s mini solo. It was just allergies. The auditorium was unexpectedly dusty during her performance.

Afterwards, he hands her a bouquet of red roses. She deserves them because she was clearly the best out of her whole dance class. She smiles her shy, happy smile at him and she looks so cute in her tutu that he totally doesn’t cry again.

When he goes home that night he dreams about watching her dance under the bright lights of the stage at Carnegie Hall. _It’s Swan Lake, his favorite. She’s the swan princess trapped within the lake but in the end the power of love sets her free._


End file.
